Feeding my apathy

Burlington Post

Honestly, I never thought I’d get to this point.

The NHL is back. And I really don’t care.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy the lockout is over. But it has more do with no longer hearing about hockey-related revenue, salary variance and anti-trust suits when I tune in to watch the highlights. The only make whole provisions I want to hear from now on will have to do with donuts.

When I got hooked on sports as a kid, it was from watching This Week in Baseball and seeing the players making spectacular catches and wanting to do that myself. As soon as the show ended, I would go out and throw a tennis ball against the side of the house in a way that it would force me to dive to stop it from getting past me.

Not once do I remember watching TV and being so inspired that I ran outside to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement between G.I. Joe and Evel Knievel.

Fact is, baseball was once my favourite sport — until 1994. That’s the year a strike wiped out the World Series and the Montreal Expos’ best season along with it. Slowly, I drifted more and more toward hockey until it had supplanted baseball as my sport of choice.

At least this was a sport I could count on. Sure, it had its own problems. That same year, the NHL lost half a season to a lockout but it at least had the good sense to honour the tradition of the game by crowning a champion.

A decade later they would prove me wrong. I’m not sure why I cut the NHL so much slack after cancelling the entire season 2004-05 season. Maybe, I was just so happy it was back.

I was caught completely off guard by the colossal stupidity of the players and owners seven years ago. That time I picked a side (the players). I agonized over how long the season would be.

This time, I had no sympathy for either side. I had resigned myself that there would be no season. And I was OK with that. Just wake me up when it’s over. (Unless it’s over at 5 a.m., in which case just tell me when I drag my butt out of bed).

Will I watch games on TV? Sure. Sports is still the best reality TV show out there. I still love hockey, but the NHL has lost some of its lustre.

The good news is the Blue Jays’ off-season moves helped fill the hockey void. Fourty-six days until the spring training opener. I’m looking more forward to that than the NHL season starting in 10 days. The needle is swinging back toward baseball.

Will the NHL recover? Eventually, yes. But for me, it will never be the same.